Urban Geography Research Group
"Welcome to the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers Urban Geography Research Group (UGRG). This site contains information about the UGRG Committee , its various activities and events, and details on joining our mailing list. It is designed to present useful urban research and teaching resources (such as images and syllabi) to members and other interested browsers.
The UGRG is committed to the support and promotion of urban geography as an intellectual field and sub-discipline. We are committed to developing constructive dialogue between different analytical, theoretical and methodological traditions of urban geography and urban studies, and to increasing the profile of female and early career urban geographers."
(Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
University policy set to undermine contributions made by early career researchers and new knowledge areas
The "University of Canterbury [New Zealand] is looking to fine colleges that do not have enough research active staff is a further worrying sign that universities are misusing PBRF [Performance Based Research Fund] information, says TEU deputy secretary Nanette Cormack.
'PBRF scores were designed and intended as tools for government funding allocation, not for universities to use to punish individual colleges and the staff within them.'
'Using PBRF data as a proxy for internal management is an abdication by managers of their responsibilities.'
'The reality is that it is not realistic to expect that every college at the University of Canterbury , or any other university, will get high PBRF rankings. For instance new academics can take time to find their feet as researchers, but colleges should not be discouraged from employing bright new academics in case they get hit with future years of $40,000 fines.'
'It's also unfair to expect recently merged or subsumed units, such as the College of Education, without a history of active research, to be turning out internationally recognised research in a short space of time.'
'If the university's central focus becomes chasing research dollars it needs to be very aware that it does not let its other role, teaching, suffer. Academics need good professional development opportunities and support to become good researchers, not punishments for failing to live up to overly ambitious targets,' concluded Ms Cormack."
(New Zealand Tertiary Education Union, 17 July 2009)
[While this move will inevitably provide a useful boost for traditional research areas (operating within accepted discourses) it will also act to limit opportunities for early career researchers and devalue contributions drawn from new knowledge areas.]
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
The need for researcher experience and interpretive creativity is inherent in grounded theory
"The need for researcher experience and interpretive creativity is inherent in grounded theory (and qualitative research as a paradigm) to yield trustworthy substantive theory. Researcher depth of sensitivity toward data analysis cannot be overemphasised. Although novice researchers are looking to the literature for procedural guidance for their early forays into the field, seasoned grounded theorists are publishing descriptions of techniques that have performed well over time as the researchers gained acumen with their tradition. Publishing techniques to the extant literature submits them to the test of scholarly discussion, where they are examined and either rejected or refined. In this paper we offer the research community two qualitative data analysis techniques for critical examination."
(Karen Wilson Scott & Dana Howell)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
